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Restorative justice needs to be for victims too

By Natasha Cook - posted Tuesday, 9 February 2021


Restorative justice aims to develop understanding and empathy in offenders through explanation of crime impact by victims. It is promoted as an innovative strategy that reduces recidivism, enables victim redress and saves incarceration cost.

As a kidney doctor, I had no exposure to courts and corrections processes before a tragic incident in my personal life. I had certainly never heard of restorative justice.

Here I share my experience with a restorative justice pilot project, as well my opinions about making it viable corrections process. I have no professional restorative justice expertise.

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On June 6 2016 my 47 year old former Vietnamese refugee multilingual general practitioner husband was struck whilst running by a drunk heroin addicted driver. Devastating brain injury ended his generous and productive life as it was. He remains here as a ghost, but lost as a husband and father. Keeping him safe from state care means intrusive home support and public parenting. His loss of testamentary capacity means state authorities interrogate our finances annually. Systems plague our lives.

The offender was sentenced to 3.5 years to serve a minimum of 2 without parole, with an inclusive license cancellation period of 3.5 years. For sentence mitigation, his polysubstance abuse, mental health problems and head injury were described in court. Consumption of 10 standard alcohol drinks a day for 20 years was almost certainly associated with acquired brain injury.

Moving on from what seemed a paltry sentence, I avidly sought outlets for constructive action

I asked questions about how health information could be used to rehabilitate damaged people and keep the community safe. I became passionate about medical driving fitness, victims of crime and road trauma advocacy.

Restorative justice was introduced to me by another road safety advocate. She made me aware of a victim led restorative justice pilot project for negligent and culpable driving conducted by a local university law research unit

This sounded like a good fit with my broad view that corrections process could entail more constructive interaction between health and justice systems

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Written and verbal information was provided, but there was no formal participant information and consent form as mandated in medical research, nor any information about a research ethics governance body.

After some early meetings with law practitioner researchers, I was introduced to the facilitator. She was to interact with the offender and me separately then bring us together. Her background was social work with an interest in dispute resolution. She hadn't conducted any victim/offender conferences in our state criminal justice system.

For his safety and mine, I assumed there would be thorough offender assessment regarding cognition, mental health, personality and capacity for genuine remorse by a suitably qualified professional, as well as ongoing support for him. There was not.

The facilitator stipulated that when we met it would be as equals. I agreed with our fundamental equality as human beings and Australian citizens, but I disputed that we had equally valid points of view in this meeting.

The next shock was being informed that the meeting could not be about "making the offender feel bad". I didn't want him to keep feeling bad, but it seemed pivotal to the outcome that he understand fully the harm caused. .If he was at all redeemable, he would feel remorse.

Relations deteriorated and I was informed by email I was unsuitable "because I didn't subscribe to the principles of equality and not doing harm". This devastated my fragile post traumatic self-esteem "Primum non nocere" or "first, do no harm" is a core principle in medicine and here I was charged with non-adherence.

It has taken me a long time to recover. I felt lured into a project that was purported to be victim led, but proved absolutely offender centric in terms of whose safety was paramount and for whom benefit was really intended. Later I read some of the background proposals written by project personnel. Driving crime was deliberately chosen because victims would have to acknowledge direct harm was not intended.

I still believe that in carefully selected cases, restorative justice can be beneficial to victims, offenders and wider society. However, we have far to go in developing process that is safe and effective with genuine concern for the victim's wellbeing.

Re-victimization is a serious risk and I experienced it in one form without even meeting the offender. It cannot proceed without separate highly qualified multidisciplinary mental health professional teams for both parties. The conference facilitator could confer with these teams but should not have prior interaction with either party.

Restorative justice is largely experimental in this country, so formal ethical governance as legally mandated for medical research is needed.

"Victim survivor" is the politically correct term for those impacted by crime. Truly perceiving ourselves and being regarded as such by others is the only way forward.

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About the Author

Natasha Cook is a nephrologist and general physician and a victims of crime and road safety advocate.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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